Losing on the home front

On the one hand, the current edition of the New Statesman gives space to current defence secretary Bob Ainsworth, who tells us that opposing war in Afghanistan is "defeatism" The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security, he says.

On the other hand, in a long editorial, the same magazine opines that, "Our military presence in Afghanistan is part of the problem, not the solution." Britain should follow Canada's lead and set a date for withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is time we accepted that we are losing this war.

Ainsworth would have it that British troops know they are in Afghanistan to prevent the country becoming a haven for terrorists, as it was in 2001. But they are also motivated by the plight of the people they are fighting alongside. They understand clearly why they are there and the progress they are making.

He then observes that "this sense of purpose and momentum has not translated to the home front in the way that it might have," continuing with the lament:

Despite the huge influx of US and other Nato troops, despite the focus of the Obama administration and the recent success of operations in Helmand, some in the UK believe the fight is not worth it. This defeatism has been exacerbated by political arguments about British troop levels, vehicles and helicopters that often misunderstand the nature of coalition warfare.

Together we are achieving some success, he concludes. The Taliban, terrorists and violent extremists are being squeezed from both sides. But we must keep up the pressure. This is a tough fight and it is a long way from over. Our armed forces are doing their job courageously and with great skill. They deserve our support to see it through.

Then we have a long piece from Stephen Grey. Interviewing soldiers, he got the view that "there's no point massively getting all worked up ... At the end of the day, in the army, you're just a pawn to the politicians."

Many of the soldiers he interviewed thought discussions about the reasons for the British presence in Afghanistan were largely a matter of passing the time, almost an intellectual pursuit, not something that really affected morale.

Many of the men said they were in the army for "the craic", a term that covered all the adrenalin and honour and proving yourself that war involved. It was important that they weren't doing something bad; beyond that, for most, it did not seem that the details mattered.

It has been hard, he writes, for soldiers - for anyone - to follow the detailed explanations of just why we are in Helmand:

It was to combat al-Qaeda that British forces first entered Afghanistan in 2001. That was a limited commitment. Five lives were lost in the first five years. Then, in 2006, when the troop numbers rose dramatically, the British headed south to Helmand with a mission described by the then defence secretary, John Reid, as being "to support reconstruction", but which has shifted constantly.

Others have spoken since of the need to support the Afghan government. Or to lift the war-torn country out of poverty. Or to fight the growth of the world opium trade that is centred in Helmand. Or, as is the official line now, to secure the country from a revival of al-Qaeda. "If we can't even get straight why we're there, how can we get straight our strategy to win?" one UK battalion commander said to me recently.

So, we move on to Dame Vera Lynn in The Times. She says that Britain’s Afghan campaign makes no sense All the official reasons given to explain why 9,000 British troops are fighting in Afghanistan have failed to convince her. "I don't know what Afghanistan's all about, I don't know what we are doing there," she adds.

The former "Forces' sweetheart", who is now 92, has no difficulty in understanding the reasons for the sacrifices that had to be made during the Second World War. But she is perplexed about the campaign in Afghanistan, saying: "At one time, our soldiers would fight for the country they came from to stop the enemy invading, but now they are involved in other countries’ problems."

Meanwhile, the bodies of four dead soldiers arrive back in the UK today, while Grey, several hundred soldiers are back in Britain on mid-tour leave. Knowing that their friends are right now facing the bullets, writes Grey, most wish they weren't here. They will be staring at people in the street who don't give a damn. They will be talking to so-called friends in the pub who will listen to about a minute of the truth before their eyes glaze over and they change the subject.

The soldiers will hate every minute of their so-called rest and recreation. Those I know will spend their "holiday" with a can of beer in one hand and the remote in the other, flicking between the sport and the agonising headlines that flash along the bottom of Sky News.

The crowds at memorial events show that support for soldiers is also high. And yet there is a kind of collective hypocrisy that combines a concern for the welfare of the armed forces with a lack of interest in the war. Few are sold on the aims of the war, however often they are repeated.

How many of us, Grey asks, have bothered to learn even the names of the principal places where this war is being fought - in Helmand, the towns of Lashkar Gah, Garmsir, Sangin, Musa Qala?

What really gets soldiers' goat, he adds, is the endless speeches saying "Thank you, thank you, thank you" for their sacrifice. There is that hoary old George Orwell misquotation: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Soldiers in the field generally wish a handful fewer people were sleeping peaceably and a few more - and particularly those who work for the peacetime-focused bureaucracies of Whitehall - were spending a bit more time wide awake, supporting them meaningfully.

Any which way you look at this, the government has a problem. In its pursuit of the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people, it has not even managed to convince the British people that the task is justified. "It is time we accepted that we are losing this war," says the New Statesman.

On the home front, at least, it looks as if it is right.

COMMENT THREAD

A sine qua non

A lengthy report (351 pages, pdf) from the House of Common Foreign Affairs Committee gets an airing in the media today and we are seeing more reporting on the online editions.

Conveying the flavour of the report is Deborah Haynes in The Times, who fillets the conclusions to tell us one of the main findings, that "Britain has taken on far more than it can handle in Afghanistan and should instead focus on security, ditching its lead role in other objectives such as fighting the drugs trade."

She goes on to write:

A failure by different Government departments to coordinate their work has also hampered progress in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, where the majority of British troops are based, according to the cross-party report. In a damning indictment of Britain’s past eight years in the country, the ... Committee warned that the Government risked losing support for the mission at home and in Afghanistan by failing to set out clear and achievable goals.

This blog is very keen to see MPs take a greater role in criticising government performance, particularly through the select committee system, and then to contribute to the more effective formulation of policy. However, if the Committee's remedy for the lack of direction is to recommend that in the immediate future "the Government should re-focus its efforts to concentrate its limited resources on one priority, namely security," then its priorities are misplaced.

Nonetheless, while it may have a good point about the failure to set out clear and achievable goals having an influence on public support, simply then for concentrate on security, per se is unlikely to have the desired effect, not least because it has missed a crucial point: arguably the most powerful influence on public sentiment is the steady, high profile reportage of troop casualties.

To that effect, the absolute priority must first become – not so much as an objective as a sine qua non - force protection. Unless the military can contain what is seen as an unacceptable and unsustainable casualty rate, it will not be able to deliver on any other agenda.

Furthermore, the military must not only be able to protect itself, it must be able to do so with an economy of resource, without degrading its own operational capabilities. Otherwise, we end up in the situation which poisoned the Iraqi campaign where so much effort was devoted to countering attacks that almost all the effort was devoted to this end. Thus did the military end up describing themselves as the "self-licking lollipop."

In terms, force protection comprises three components: base protection; route security; and what might be termed operational security.

Compared with Iraq, where British bases were under constant attack from indirect fire – and even direct assault – base protection has not been quite so problematical in Afghanistan. Under the combined weight of IEDs deployed on an industrial scale, and the composite ambushes involving direct fire in combination with IED ambushes, however, route security is proving to be a major issue.

Similarly, "operational security" is giving rise to considerable concerns, some of which we addressed in the previous piece.

If there are failings here, none are more egregious than in the failure of the military to secure its lines of communication. A very significant proportion of its casualties arise while troops are transiting in vehicles, mostly prey to IEDs.

Here, the continued impression that the military is failing to treat this issue seriously is reinforced by a piece in The Mail on Sunday, where Christopher Leake records that: "A British anti-bomb device that has saved dozens of American soldiers’ lives is not being used by UK troops – despite a rise in the number killed in road-side attacks."

This is the "Self-Protection Adaptive Roller Kit", known as SPARK, equipment which is usually fixed to the front of military vehicles and has rollers which take the full brunt of any blast. Soldiers are thus protected from injury and their vehicle is left intact so they can drive away from the "hit zone" rather than suffer further attacks by insurgents.

The effectiveness of this equipment is well proven and there have been numerous articles in the American military and specialist press testifying to that (see: here, here, here and here), but this is the first time the equipment has been mentioned in the popular media here – although we have referred to mine rollers several times on this blog. Over two years ago, we even referred to their use in the 1970s, in Oman, attached to Saladin armoured personnel carriers.

Currently, Leake charges that the MoD bought 12 of the SPARK devices but, he claims, they have been mothballed because the Army does not have the mounting kit needed to attach them to vehicles. This appears perverse as one of the claimed advantages of this kit is the ease with which it can be attached to a wide range of vehicles, from Humvees to 5-ton trucks and different MRAPs, including RG-31s (pictured, top).

The perversity appears even greater when one appreciates that a number of new vehicle types have recently been introduced to theatre, such as the Ridgeback and the Mastiff 2, either or both of which could surely have been modified to use this equipment.

It is not the case though that the British Army is not using mine rollers, as one assembly was seen fitted to a Mastiff (thus demonstrating the capability of this vehicle) during the Kajaki convoy in August 2008 (pictured right). Whether this was a SPARK device is not clear. With only 12 sets bought, though, this seems a poor effort when then US forces have over 300 sets in use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What is more worrying, perhaps is the response of the MoD to Leake's charge. "No single piece of equipment can provide complete protection from the changing threats posed by improvised explosive devices," a spokesman said, apparently not conceding that the mine roller is an essential part of any equipment package if the IED threat is to be defeated.

Our problem is that, if the MoD does not recognise this, and the select committees are not pointing us the issues – even though the MPs felt qualified to direct military priorities – then we are not even past first base.

COMMENT THREAD

Losing us the war

One worries about some of the so-called experts called upon to pronounce on various aspects of the Afghani campaign, as to whether they really know what they are talking about.

One such who gives rise to not a little concern is Professor Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute, who is sternly holding forth on the objectives of the Taleban today in The Times.

He tells us, very much in line with British commanders in the field, that Taliban commanders have made Helmand their key objective, then going on to inform us that "new recruits to their units flow in from Pakistan, but they are not well trained or well led."

Undoubtedly, it is the case that many Taleban recruits are poorly trained and led, but as a sweeping statement this sits ill with the observations from Jason Burke in The Guardian. He recently reported a "new peril for British troops in Afghanistan" telling us that the Taleban "have learned modern warfare." Imagination, greater firepower and strengthening of Taliban's ideological bond, he wrote, leaves the coalition facing higher casualty rates.

More recently, we read Sean Rayment's excellent account in The Sunday Telegraph of last week's attack on soldiers of the 2nd Bn, The Rifles, killing five of their number and seriously injuring three more.

According to Rayment, the Rifles patrol first triggered an IED as they entered an alleyway inside a small hamlet. One soldier died instantly and seven others were seriously wounded. Following standard drills, the patrol withdrew to a more secure location so that the wounded could be treated. And there, waiting for them was a massive IED which detonated killing another three soldiers, one of whom had been wounded in the first blast.

Meanwhile, a group of four soldiers who had left the area to secure a helicopter landing site discovered another IED which had been laid to destroy the approaching helicopters. Without the ability to defuse the bomb, the troops had no choice but to order the helicopter to land inside their base, leading to further delays in getting aid to the wounded. One other died on the operating table after he had been airlifted to Camp Bastion. And en route to their base, two more IEDs were discovered. Fortunately neither detonated.

Rayment asserts that the Taleban has predicted the troops' movements and had laid their devices where they would have their most devastating effect – tactics which demonstrate a high degree of planning and some sophistication. But then, as Burke notes in his piece, the tactics of the coalition forces have been studied closely – and the Taleban commanders have learned from them and adjusted their tactics.

Professor Michael Clarke, therefore, does not seem to have the measure of the Taleban in his own analysis and nor would it be advisable to rely on him for his declaration that, while IEDs can be devastatingly effective even against the most heavily armoured vehicles, "they are the technique of the terrorist; not decisive and not the weapon that will win a campaign."

Would that Clarke had read today's newspapers, listened to the radio and watched television. The two bombs which caused such havoc and misery to the men of The 2nd Rifles have reverberated around the world, the effect here magnified by the intensive media publicity.

Clarke, in fact, is terribly, terribly wrong. The IED is a "war winner", not as a military weapon but as a propaganda tool, weakening the resolve of the home front and the politicians as they see the coffins, one after the other, make their final journeys from the aircraft bearing them from foreign fields.

Yet, Clarke is the "expert". It is he who gets to pontificate in The Times and, no doubt, has the ear of the powerful and the mighty. And it is the quality of analyses such as his that is going to lose us the war.

COMMENT THREAD

The home front

It is essential to stop Afghanistan becoming an "incubator for terrorism" and a launchpad for attacks on the UK and other countries says David Miliband.

The badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan – that border area – have been used to launch terrible attacks, not just on the United States, but on Britain as well. Thus, he says, "We know that until we can ensure there is a modicum of stability and security provided by Afghan forces for their own people, we are not going to be able to be secure in our own country."

The thought is echoed by The Times which affirms that, "The campaign in Afghanistan is crucial," adding that, "It has been advanced by British servicemen of extraordinary courage and real heroism."

"The failures in the campaign have been on the home front: the British Government has been dilatory and uncertain in making the case for the war," it goes on to say. "Nor has it provided sufficient armoured vehicles for the troops already there or adequate and consistent numbers of troops on the ground to establish the security that is the foundation for building a new nation in Afghanistan."

The paper then states the obvious: "The campaign for Afghanistan must be won," adding the rider: "And it is time the Government started doing a better job of fighting for it at home."

Here, there are many problems, to add to the extraordinarily difficult matter of defining "victory". Presumably, when the land is covered with Ferris wheels, packed with happy Afghani wimmin, spinning to the beat of the latest Michael Jackson release, that will be considered to be one measure. Short of that, though, it is difficult to know what our rulers have in mind.

Of the other problems, surely the most intractable is that the "home front" does not actually care enough – or at all - about the Afghani campaign.

As long as "Our Boys" are not getting killed in excessive numbers – as defined by the media when it can be bothered to report events - most people are more concerned with running their own affairs and warding off the depredations of this pitiful government which, in its own way, seems more destructive than the Taleban.

And, while one might expect the political classes and their associated claques to be more interested in such matters than the great unwashed – in that condition as hidden inflation makes the price of soap an unreachable luxury – there is no evidence that this is the case.

If the British political blogosphere is any guide – and it probably does reflect the prevailing obsessions – not only does its relative silence speak volumes but the rare foray by Tory Boy Blog is struggling to compete, in terms of comment volume, with the later entry covering that stunning revelation that: "CCHQ downgrades oak tree logo." One is amazed that they are not live blogging on it.

The Times does have a point though. It is very hard to engage in an issue where the objectives are poorly defined, vague or so obviously unrealistic that they lack credibility, where there is no narrative or measure of progress – other than the mounting death toll – and where there is no significant discourse which will fuel an ongoing debate.

Thus we are supposed to rely on the current CDS, Jock Stirrup, who lied his way through the Iraqi campaign and its aftermath and, for all we know, is lying to us now.

This may be especially so in terms of his less than credible statement that, " ... the Taliban have rightly identified Helmand as their vital ground. If they lose there then they lose everywhere and they are throwing everything they have into it."

Operation Panchai Palang - and the parallel operations being conducted by US forces may – or may not be vital in the short-term, but it is far from the "game-changing event" that Stirrup would have us believe. The Taleban will simply regroup, recover what losses they have sustained and continue to prosecute their insurgency.

Here, one takes note of the fact that the attack which killed five troops was mounted out of the immediate operational area of Panchai Palang which indicates that the Taleban, even when under pressure around Lashkar Gah, still had the resources to attack elsewhere, with devastating effect.

We could, on the other hand, take the advice of Lt-Col Tim Collins (ret) who enjoins us to "support the judgement and experience of Brigadier Radford and his men. They are on the ground and we are not." Of course, we heard the same thing – or similar – of Iraq, where the "judgement and experience" and the military commanders of the time had our troops patrolling in Snatch Land Rovers, with effects which were predictable – it seems – to everyone but them.

Collins believes that, if we lose, it will be because we have defeated ourselves by a lack of nerve – that "home front" again - and if that happens the sacrifice will be in vain. "Keep the faith," he tells us.

However, in what should we keep our "faith"? Assailed by IEDs, our forces are struggling to deal with this weapon which the Taleban are using to such great effect. However, the emergence of this problem was flagged up in January 2007 by The Financial Times yet it was not until October last year that the MoD focused on buying the essential equipment to deal with this threat, in the "Talisman" project – with deliveries not to take place until next year, leaving the Americans to do the work.

This is a military that also fielded the Viking and the Vector, both of which vehicles could not meet the threat present in the theatre by the time they were deployed, and certainly are not up to the current challenge. It is a military that, in effect, has been behind the curve from the very start, and is struggling to catch up, reacting rather than pre-empting the Taleban's constant evolution of tactics.

If the military have feet of clay then, perhaps we could turn to Rory Stewart, soldier, diplomat and academic who has travelled extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq. He tells us that Afghanistan is "a war we cannot win" and, in a long and rambling thesis argues that the best Afghan policy would be to reduce the number of foreign troops from the current 90,000 to perhaps 20,000 – turning away from the idea of state-building.

Two distinct objectives would remain: development and counter-terrorism with the "good projects" allowed to continue in electricity, water, irrigation, health, education, agriculture, rural development – but not a single mention of roads. We should not control and cannot predict the future of Afghanistan, he says.

With such contradictory and unreliable advice, it is no wonder that we find it hard to engage in the issue – and retreat to the comfort zone of oft' repeated mantras. One can then only take comfort in the words of the MoD's own "spin doctor", Lt-Col Nick Richardson. He insists that operations in Helmand are achieving "a huge amount" and the soldiers had not died in vain. "It is fair to say that war is not risk free. We are taking the fight to the enemy," he says.

Even then one wonders, not least where the true enemy lies. More than the Taleban, the greatest threat to Afghanistan (and therefore our own security) could be the home front, here in the UK, bludgeoned into indifference by wholly unrealistic and ill-defined objectives.

COMMENT THREAD